‘A Real Pain’ presents the parallels of generational struggle

Jesse Eisenberg created the film A Real Pain to depict the emotional distress between two Jewish American cousins touring modern-day Poland as they learn more about the trauma of the Holocaust.

“I wanted to talk about that pain (between cousins) but set against the backdrop of something so much more objectively worse, like World War 2 trauma,” Eisenberg said.

He wanted to pose an important question to the audience and to himself.

“What pain is valid? Are we supposed to take these two young men seriously, even though their pain could not compare to massive, mass-scale terror, or are we supposed to dismiss them because their lives are irrelevant against the backdrop?” he said.

A Real Pain is distributed by Searchlight Pictures, a unit of Walt Disney, and arrives in theatres on Friday. The film follows different-tempered cousins David, played by Eisenberg, and Benji, played by Kieran Culkin, as they reunite for a group tour of Poland to learn more about their grandmother and Jewish history.

The movie also stars Will Sharpe as James, the group tour guide, and Jennifer Grey, Kurt Egyiawan, Liza Sadovy and Daniel Oreskes, who play members of the tour group.

Things take a turn when the emotional tension between the cousins rises, and they work to process their complex feelings about their family.

It wasn’t until watching himself play Benji on-screen that Culkin truly analysed his character. “Knowing somebody in my life who is pretty similar to Benji” helped Culkin understand the character in a deeper way.

For Sharpe, Benji serves as a big influence on the rest of the characters as they go through the historic tour.

“I think Benji, Kieran's character, impacts each of our characters along the film's journey, and often he does it in almost quite a competitive way,” said Sharpe, who appeared in the TV series The White Lotus.

Benji challenges the way James conducts the tour, which makes him think about his job in a different way, Sharpe said. By contrast, Sharpe sees David, Eisenberg's character, both “fascinated and frustrated” by his cousin’s constant transparency and outspokenness.

For Grey, the film comes down to a story about people who are healing. “The cure for pain is healing, and it doesn't mean it goes away. It  means there's perhaps some mitigating of the pain, some shift in perspective,” she said.

For her, from the horror of the Holocaust to the struggles the cousins face in the modern day, the movie is about the overall pains of life.

Reuters